The Passengers

Robert Allen Papinchak

John Marrs’ rapid-paced The Passengers is Speed on steroids, an adrenaline-pumped novel so heavily plotted that it is virtually impossible to hold back spoilers. In the near future, the UK House of Lords has voted unanimously to favor driverless cars on British roads with the intent to ban all non-autonomous vehicles within ten years’ time. What appears to be a reasonable solution to air pollution and safety concerns quickly escalates into a cautionary tale about artificial intelligence, government intervention, and moral relativism.

The titular passengers who find themselves locked in their driverless Level 5 vehicles include a 26-year-old special-needs teacher seven months pregnant with her first child, a 78-year-old actress past her professional prime, a married couple, an abused wife, a non-English-speaking Somali immigrant, a disabled war veteran, and a suicidal young man. Each hides a very dark secret. Among them is a bigamist, a pedophile, a blackmailer, an adulterer, and an alleged murderer.

Connecting all of them is a hacker with plans to determine their destiny. He programs each vehicle to drive to an “alternative destination” where the possibility of a death sentence awaits each passenger at the end of their trip. Along for the ride, so to speak, are the five members of the government committee charged with determining fault when an autonomous car is involved in any crash: a transport minister, a barrister, a religious pluralist, a pathologist, and a mental- health nurse trainee. The hacker demands the jury decide his passengers’ fates. Marrs widens the story further by turning the kidnappings into a media event when it becomes a worldwide live reality TV show where viewers get the chance to vote for their favorite passenger.

The parallel narrative lines converge as the countdown continues right up to the climactic last seconds. Finally, the clock runs out, but not before Marrs presents a few more surprises in the last big reveal. Some readers will have worked out the identity of the hacker early on. Nevertheless, The Passengers has a properly satisfying, head-spinning conclusion.

Hudson’s Kill

Jean Gazis

Hudson’s Kill is a historical thriller set in New York City in 1803. The title of this action-packed sequel to the widely praised Devil’s Half Mile is a play on words. A “kill” in New York history meant a stream or watercourse, from the Dutch spoken by early settlers. (It remains in many regional place names.) Of course, to kill also means to murder. The rapidly growing city is a bubbling ferment of political and financial schemes, where rival gangs, free blacks and slaves, destitute immigrants, and wealthy property owners all jockey for power and influence. A special commission is deciding how to shape the city’s future; anyone with advance knowledge of the plan stands to make a fortune. Crime and prostitution are rampant, and there’s no formal police force—just a handful of city marshals and a mostly volunteer night watch.

In such a volatile environment, biracial schoolteacher Kerry O’Toole’s discovery of a viciously murdered, dark-skinned young girl sets off more than an ordinary criminal investigation. Her friend, City Marshal Justice Flanagan, an Irish immigrant, is determined to find out the girl’s identity and bring the killer to account despite limited resources and the seeming indifference of his chief. No one comes forward to claim the victim’s body, and Justy’s investigation soon ensnares him in a convoluted maze of public violence and secret depravity that reaches from the lowest to the highest elements of society, from Wall Street to the swampy fringes where the filthy stream called Hudson’s Kill will one day become Canal Street. There are hints of romantic attraction between Justy and Kerry, who is conducting her own, increasingly risky undercover investigation.

Hudson’s Kill reads like a fast-paced action movie with plentiful, surprising twists and turns. One dramatic event follows another with hardly a pause. Violent confrontations are vividly depicted, blow-by-blow, in sometimes gruesome detail. Colorful characters abound and authentic period slang, or “flash talk,” lends an air of realism to the vibrant dialogue that is occasionally undercut by the use of more modern expressions such as “you know the drill.” The issues of political corruption, financial speculation, race relations, gender roles, and human trafficking, however, are as real now as they were more than two centuries ago. The entertaining narrative sweeps the reader along, grounding sometimes far-fetched plot elements in gritty detail.

Under the Cold Bright Lights

Benjamin Boulden

Under the Cold Bright Lights is a beautifully written, complex, and character-driven standalone police procedural set in Victoria, Australia. Alan Auhl retired from police work once, but was brought back as an Acting Sergeant in Victoria’s Cold Crimes Unit. Now his desk is littered with old investigations that were never quite closed. There is John Elphick, whose death was determined an accident, but whose daughters are certain he was murdered. There’s the ten-year-old murder of a young woman that has heated up since the prime suspect in the case, her boyfriend, was recently found buried under a concrete slab. There’s also a case Auhl was unable to prove when he was on the murder squad, a doctor suspected of killing his two wives—it’s on the books again because the good doctor has accused his current wife of trying to poison him.

Under the Cold Bright Lights’ major plotlines are woven together with smooth and lucid prose. The crimes are well-devised and interesting, but their main purpose is to serve as a backdrop for Auhl’s evolution. Auhl is an old and cynical cop whom fellow detectives don’t think much of and whose ex-wife lives with him only part-time. Over the years, he has become used to seeing bad people get what they want. Being back on the force and without much to lose is his opportunity to push back. His changing morality makes for some uncomfortable actions, but Auhl is far from a bad man. In fact, he’s the kind of guy who turns his home into a boarding house for anyone in need of shelter. The reader may not like everything Auhl does, but we understand his motives and his psychology. Under the Cold Bright Lights is as much a morality play as it is a mystery novel, and it’s this humanity that pulls it to the top of the genre.

Mother Knows Best

Vanessa Orr

After Claire and Ethan Abrams’ eight-year-old son dies from a genetic mutation, Claire is desperate to have another child. When regular fertility programs don’t work, she convinces Ethan that they need to see Dr. Robert Nash, who illegally helps them conceive a baby—with three genetic parents. Their experiment is assisted by brilliant scientist Jillian Hendricks, who is obsessed with her career—and her boss.

When the news leaks out, sparking a legal and media frenzy, Robert and Claire flee, leaving Jillian to pay the price. After serving a prison sentence, she is ready to begin her life again—by destroying theirs.

The author, who has a master’s degree in bioethics, raises many important issues in Mother Knows Best about the challenges of genetically engineering embryos to prevent inherited diseases. By bookending the topic in a fast-moving thriller, she makes the science much more understandable to the layperson. She humanizes it even more by giving this “experiment” a human face: alternating chapters are told by Abby, the child born as a result of Nash’s work.

It is Abby, in fact, who unknowingly places her family in danger by taking a DNA test to surprise her mother. As a result, Jillian finds the family, who have been in hiding since Abby’s birth. The catand- mouse game that ensues is intense, and makes Claire and her husband question her sanity, especially when she begins seeing her dead son.

Whether or not you agree with genetic engineering or even know anything about it, this novel will make you think about the possibilities, and the consequences, of creating life in a lab. It will also make you wonder about how far a mother will go to protect her child, no matter how that child came to be hers.

Kopp Sisters on the March

Katrina Niidas Holm

Set in the spring of 1917, Amy Stewart’s engaging fifth Kopp Sisters novel (after Miss Kopp Just Won’t Quit) finds America on the brink of entering WWI. Tired of watching Constance mope over the loss of her job as a Bergen County sheriff’s deputy, Norma enrolls the three siblings at Camp Chevy Chase in Maryland. Run by the National Service School, the facility’s goal is to train women for the female duties of war (bandage- sewing, bed-making, etc.). Upon arriving, Fleurette becomes obsessed with staging a vaudeville show, Norma endeavors to convince the army of the military value of carrier pigeons, and Constance becomes the outpost’s reluctant leader after its originalmatron gets hurt. The trio is so absorbed in their activities that they fail to notice that one of their tentmates, “Roxie Collins,” is actually the notorious Beulah Binford, who hopes that joining the war effort will allow her to start over in France.

Less a mystery than a semifictionalized story about a reallife historical figure branded by her association with a real-life crime, this entertaining book packs plenty of punch. Artfully strewn flashbacks to Beulah’s scandalous past create tension and narrative drive, while vividly sketched characters and a thoughtfully crafted plot spotlight the misogyny of the criminal justice system, the predatory nature of the press, and society’s double standards regarding morality and sex. Humor and hijinks abound, but at its core, Stewart’s latest is a proudly feminist tale about strong, smart women finding the courage to seize control of their lives and chart their own paths. A hopeful, gratifying conclusion leaves readers eager to discover what the future holds for the series’ intrepid heroines.

The Third Mrs. Durst

Sarah Prindle

Marlena Altizer grew up in a povertystricken rural area without electricity or plumbing, so when she marries Michael Durst, a wealthy business tycoon, she is propelled into the very different world of New York City’s elites. But Michael forces Marlena to lie about her past (going so far as to concoct a biography about Marlena being born in Croatia and pressuring Marlena to learn Croatian). Her husband has her watched, bugs her phone, and eventually his controlling behavior escalates to verbal and physical violence. Marlena knows it’s only a matter of time before she ends up like his first two wives—dead. When Michael threatens her friends to prevent her from going to the police, she realizes the only way to save herself and her loved ones may be to kill Michael.

The Third Mrs. Durst is a story about the dangers of unchecked power, the trauma of domestic abuse, and one woman’s sheer will to survive. Marlena, though a victim, is strong, smart, and determined to see justice done. Her situation highlights the pain survivors of abuse often hide, and the fact that such abuse can happen to anyone, no matter their walk of life. The plot steadily builds suspense chapter by chapter, making for a gripping thriller anchored by a protagonist readers can really root for.

The Tower of Songs

Kevin Burton Smith

Casey Barrett swings for the fences in this jacked-up third outing for Lawrence “Duck” Darley Jr., unlicensed New York PI.

Scrape away the high drama and there’s a solid story underneath, grounded by some sharp characterization, particularly of Duck himself. A former competitive swimmer, exfelon, and a recovering alcoholic who currently self-medicates by vaping pot and attending AA meetings, he has the kind of beat-up, hinted-at backstory that could make firsttime readers stumble. Fortunately, Barrett knows how to tease, not trip.

The story opens with a bang— a prologue that actually works, featuring a crime in the clouds: the almost Bond-like kidnapping of zillionaire Daniel Soto from his sky-high Manhattan penthouse (“the highest apartment in the world”). But chapter one snaps us back to street level with Duck being tossed around a mat by a “beefy, young cop” at his local aikido dojo on a hot, sticky summer day in the city. “The beating felt good,” he confesses, “just what I needed.”

What he might not have needed was Daniel’s daughter, 17-year-old Layla, showing up. She’s convinced only Duck can rescue her father, thanks to the glowing recommendation of a classmate’s mother. She hands Duck a bag of cash to seal the deal. Nonplussed, Duck insists on meeting her mother.

And then we’re off to the races. Nicole Soto is a pillhead barely keeping it together, but agrees to let Duck proceed. But the Soto’s security chief, when questioned, threatens Duck, and then somebody else slips him an almost-fatal dose, landing him in the hospital (complete with a welcome poke at health care—who does pay for private eye boo-boos?).

No wonder he calls in Cass Kimball, his sometime partner, a leather-wearing dominatrix with some pretty fierce detective chops herself. And it soon becomes apparent that Duck will need all the help he can get, as the story bounces from the Big Apple to the Hamptons and back, with all sorts of nasties popping up and bodies dropping as the stakes rise and the excitement gets ramped up to action-flick levels.

Sure, all that heavy breathing is enjoyable enough. But unnecessary, given how taken I was with Duck and Cass.

Mr. Barrett? You had me at “The beating felt good....”

Lost You

Vanessa Orr

Libby Reese has everything, including a loving husband, a nice home, and plenty of money. The only thing that she wants—after ten years of trying—is a baby. Anna Lenihan doesn’t have anything, a job, or a way to pay the bills. All she wants is a better life.

Driven by desperation, Anna answers an ad in the paper and agrees to become a surrogate mother. The only problem is that once her son is born, she knows she can’t give him away.

This is a story of surrogacy gone wrong, and the damage that results when two mentally fragile women both fight for the same child. Not willing to risk a court battle after Anna absconds with her son, Libby decides to take back what she believes is her baby— with tragic results.

This story is distressing on many levels. From Anna’s manipulation by a shady surrogacy agency, to Libby’s all-consuming desire to have a child at the risk of everything else, to a crime that continues to haunt both women for years, there is no doubt that there can be no happy ending.

Haylen Beck does an impressive job of humanizing both main characters, so that things aren’t as black-and-white as one might expect. It’s easy to feel empathy for both Libby and Anna, and understand the forces that drive them to make dangerous, life-altering decisions. Despite the fact that the final confrontation is three years in the making, the author keeps the story moving at a breakneck pace, alternating between a present- day, life-or-death situation and chapters focused on the past that show what led to the story’s terrifying climax.

While you might read this book in one sitting, it will stay with you long after the last page. While there is nothing like a mother’s love, there is also nothing like the pain of a mother’s loss.

Devotion

Eileen Brady

Bring together a troubled nanny and her wealthy and beautiful boss, stir in an ambitious and horny husband—well-seasoned with alcohol and drugs—and you have a sure recipe for trouble. Devotion, a first novel by Madeline Stevens, is a psychological character study focused on Ella and her obsession with her employer, Lonnie, a seemingly carefree mother to a 16-month-old son. Ella’s fascination begins with her employer’s Manhattan lifestyle. The massages, long lunches, and designer clothes seem as out of reach to Ella as the moon. The stealing begins simply: first a book, an item of cast-off clothing, a photograph—it’s as if possessing some of the things Lonnie has will give Ella an entry into this fabulous new world. It’s not that Lonnie isn’t generous with her employee. Quite the opposite, she makes sure Ella has free rein to eat anything in the fridge, gives her extra clothes, and is affectionate and solicitous.

But kindness isn’t always returned. Ella is aimless. Though she’s no longer a teenager from Oregon—she’s a woman of 26—she’s adrift in an emotional vacuum, both awed and resentful. She’s a character floating toward disaster. And disaster does strike. Although the plot gets bogged down here and there, the psychological suspense and lush descriptions draw you in. The somewhat stereotypical characters are not who they seem to be, and your mother was right— money really doesn’t buy happiness. Strangely enough, as a reader I had sympathy not for Ella, but for the enigmatic Lonnie, who may have ended up losing—or gaining—the most at the end of the book.

Strands of Truth

Pat H. Broeske

Family ties are at the core of Strands of Truth, a convoluted suspense novel by prolific Christian author Colleen Coble. The unevenly paced book opens with a prologue: a young, pregnant woman in jeopardy is whispering a prayer to God. Three decades later we meet the woman’s daughter, Harper Taylor, now a marine biologist in Florida. After growing up in a series of foster homes, Harper has settled down on a houseboat with her black schipperke, Bear. With no boyfriend in the wings and uncertain that there’s such a thing as “a forever love,” she’s decided to undergo an embryo transplant and become a single mother.

Meanwhile, Harper’s business partner and mentor, the wealthy pharmaceutical executive Oliver Jackson, is trying to convince his son Ridge to work with Harper in their study of mollusks and snails for neurological and antibiotic use. The two have never really gotten along, but when an unknown assailant cuts Oliver’s air hose during a dive, the reluctant partners find themselves working together to discover why someone would want to harm him.

Things grow murkier when Harper learns via a DNA test that she has a half-sister, Annabelle, who, like Harper, also lost her mother to tragedy. The women’s shared genetics will lead to further dark discoveries. Sea silk—which has been utilized by artisans for centuries—threads its way into the plot.

Along the way, Harper and Ridge begin eyeing one another with mutual admiration. He likes her turquoise eyes and the way she pulls her spirited red hair back in a ponytail. She can’t help but notice that he’s become a muscled, darkly handsome hottie. Both share a love of God, and strive for generosity and forgiveness.

Though dialogue is often clunky and superfluous, Coble delivers some nicely detailed characters (though we’d like to give Harper a whap for her refusal to turn on and use her cell phone at critical moments). The writer also smoothly captures the dreaminess of her Florida Gulf Coast setting. Readers can hear waves as they hit the shore and take in the sea’s salty scent. And we more or less get a front-row seat to the famed and kitschy Weeki Wachee Springs State Park mermaid show, where a supporting character once worked.

An astute editor might have questioned the liberties taken with the novel’s criminal investigations and discerning mystery-suspense readers will probably want to give this a pass. But for Coble’s devoted flock, or those more interested in a fun setting and a little romance, the spirit of generosity and forgiveness may prevail.

Clear My Name

Vanessa Orr

Tess Gilroy works for Innocence UK, a charitable organization that overturns wrongful convictions. When a case featuring Carrie Kamara, who allegedly killed her husband’s lover, is brought before the group, Tess doesn’t want to take it because it will return her to her hometown of Morecambe and experiences that she wants to forget.

Unfortunately for Tess, she is put in charge of proving Carrie’s innocence while also being saddled with a new, inexperienced assistant. In her quest for justice, she puts both of them at risk, while also being forced to confront demons from her past.

Mothers and their daughters—and their complicated relationships—are at the heart of this novel, which focuses not only on Tess’s guilt over her mother’s death, but on the separation between Carrie and her pregnant daughter, Mia, a fragile young woman who drives the effort to get her mother out of jail. Both Tess and Carrie are extremely complicated women with life-altering secrets, and the author does an excellent job of probing their many layers. Chapters alternate between the present day, with Innocence UK working to get Carrie a new appeals hearing, and Carrie’s life four years before the murder, which provides a backstory to explain why Carrie might—or might not have—killed the new woman in her husband’s life.

While Tess works to uncover more evidence to prove that her client was framed, the secrets she’s kept hidden for so many years come to light, forcing her to make some hard decisions about guilt, innocence, and whether these lofty concepts really matter when it comes down to protecting family.

The Missing Ones

Benjamin Boulden

The Missing Ones, Edwin Hill’s second Hester Thursby novel, is a complex mystery with well-defined characters, a detailed plot, and suspense that tightens like a vise. In Somerville, Massachusetts, Hester is caring for Kate, the abandoned four-year-old daughter of her best friend, Daphne. Hester’s having her own problems, too, since she was nearly killed by a man who hired her to find a woman who didn’t want to be found. Hester hasn’t been to her job as a research librarian in a month and she’s afraid of leaving Kate at school.

On Maine’s Finisterre Island, a tourist stop during the summer months, a boy goes missing on the Fourth of July. He’s found a few hours later sleeping in a boat, but there are whispers about what really happened. Annie, a troubled woman living in an abandoned Victorian house where junkies and vagrants congregate, finds herself at the center of a search for another missing four-year-old boy. Annie thinks the two disappearances are connected, and when she begins to suspect a corrupt police officer, she becomes paranoid and scared. With a major plot twist, Hester is drawn to the island also, where she is forced to face both her fears and her past.

The Missing Ones’ sprawling, but effective, plot is built around its characters: a fisherman with an unscrupulous reputation, a local cop with eyes for a married woman, a state police detective with a mean streak. But it’s Annie who steals the show. Her mysterious backstory and uncertain motives add texture and grit to what could have been a too-smooth and generic crime thriller. Hester is more of an observer than actual participant until the final few chapters, but Hill’s expert rendering of her emotional state makes her relevant and interesting. The climactic scenes have their share of surprises, but for The Missing Ones, the emotional impact of the characters is as important as the mystery.

Fatal Cajun Festival

Joseph Scarpato, Jr.

When famous singer Tammy Barker returns with her entourage to her small hometown of Pelican in northern Louisiana to headline “Cajun Country Live,” the locals can’t wait for the excitement to begin. Unfortunately, the excitement turns to tragedy when Tammy’s manager, Pony Pickner, is electrocuted onstage by a faulty mic that is found to have been tampered with.

The local police initially suspect Gaynell Bourgeois, a talented local singer and best friend of Maggie Crozat whose family has organized the festival, thanks in no small part to Tammy’s insinuation that Gaynell had argued with the deceased not long before his death. Maggie is certain that her friend is innocent, though, and decides to do some probing of her own beginning by talking to members of Tammy’s band.

Her investigation is helped in part by her fiancé, Bo Durand, a police detective assigned to the case who agrees to go along with her plan to “break” their engagement so that she can flirt openly with the generally on-the-make band members. When another member of Tammy’s entourage is attacked and nearly killed, Maggie and the police redouble their efforts to find out who’s responsible, and eventually uncover an unusual motive and conclusion.

While I enjoyed learning more about the Cajun lifestyle, atmosphere and food choices, I found it somewhat difficult to remember who all of the three dozen characters in the novel were. Fortunately, the author provides a character listing in the front of the book, which I found quite helpful. In addition, there are a number of mouthwatering Cajun recipes included after the novel ends, some of which are already in my future cooking plans.

Thirteen

Craig Sisterson

In very short order Belfast attorney Steve Cavanagh has gone from new kid on the legal-thriller block to absolute must-read status. He pens fresh, ingenious tales blending courtroom nous and out-of-court action. Thirteen, his fourth novel starring New York defense attorney Eddie Flynn, is magnificent.

It’s a book with a phenomenal hook: a serial killer maneuvers himself on to the jury for the highest of high-profile celebrity trials, that of Hollywood star Robert Solomon, accused of murdering his wife. But why—to what end? Former con man Eddie Flynn is facing a defense counsel’s worst nightmare—a client he believes might very well be innocent, but who’s facing an overwhelming case against him, and a DA hungry for victory. Is the actor merely playing a role for Flynn, or is he being set up? Meanwhile Joshua Kane has killed someone to take a spot in the jury box. Cavanagh leads readers on a merry dance between Kane’s and Flynn’s perspectives on the unfolding trial, keeping the intrigue and tension high.

Flynn is in a chess match, but doesn’t even know all the opponents he’s playing as he fights the odds in the courtroom and tries not to mess up his own personal life even further. This is compelling, propulsive storytelling. It over-delivers on all the promise of its high-concept hook, providing plenty of depth and character to go with the clever storytelling. Cavanagh has already laid down plenty of evidence to show he’s a force to be reckoned with in the legal-thriller world, but Thirteen may just be the crucial testimony that ensures a slam-dunk verdict: that he’s right at the top of the field. Guilty as charged.

The Perfect Wife

Sharon Magee

With the sci-fi domestic thriller The Perfect Wife, JP Delaney gives readers a disturbing and unusual (in a good way) summertime offering. Abbie Cullen-Scott wakes to the sound of beeps and blips and the feeling of bandages encasing her neck. Close by, she hears her husband, Tim Scott, the obsessive and controlling über-genius of the Northern California tech world of artificial intelligence. Certain she’s been in an accident, she’s thrilled when Tim tells her both he and their autistic son, Danny, are alive and well. Then Tim drops a bombshell: she isn’t really Abbie. The real Abbie disappeared while surfing five years ago and is presumed dead. Instead, grief-stricken Tim has made her. She’s a cobot, a comfort robot that has been given the real Abbie’s physical appearance, emotions, and memories—although there are gaping holes in them.

At first, cobot Abbie is OK with this, just happy to be “back” with her family, but soon discontent sets in. She can’t smell or eat. She can’t have sex. When she finds something hidden in one of real Abbie’s books, she suspects the real Abbie may still be alive. Then she wonders: If real Abbie reappears, what will happen to me?

Author Delaney took a huge risk with this story line. It could easily have gone wrong. But this cautionary tale is beautifully done, bringing to the forefront the prickly problems that face humanity with the ever-increasing sophistication of AI. And not lost in this bizarre world of sci-fi is the subplot of Danny’s autism, which is also well handled. The Perfect Wife is sure to be one of the more thoughtprovoking books you’ll read this year.

Tell Me Everything

Ariell Cachola

When she first turns up to Hawthorne College, introverted incoming freshman Malin Ahlberg—the narrator in Cambria Brockman’s debut thriller Tell Me Everything—makes it her mission to join a close-knit group of friends. As luck would have it, their jolly and diverse group welcomes the Texas newcomer into their New England small-town ways. She latches on to Ruby, an athletic, smart, and beautiful art history major, and the two quickly become besties.

It soon becomes clear, though, that Malin has unusual reasons for doing this, as is hinted when at the beginning of the school year, her father gently advises Malin to make friends and lead a “normal” life as best she can at college. Brockman uses brief flashbacks to Malin’s childhood interspersed throughout the chapters to reveal Malin’s strange and tragic upbringing. Clearly someone good at keeping secrets, she becomes the secret-keeper to her friends. She also digs and secretly reads diaries; she quietly records and remembers everything over the group’s four years at Hawthorne, a time together that culminates in a surprising and violent death.

As readers follow Malin and her friends from the first days of freshman year through their senior year, when they are more confident and in fuller form, it becomes increasingly apparent that Malin’s agenda is less than completely friendly. As Brockman weaves through the senior-year narrative, the tension rises and Malin puts a plan into action that has so many moving pieces that somewhere along the way it will surely fall apart.

As a main character, Malin is unusual, and refreshingly so. Although she enters the tale as an introverted outsider, she is neither meek nor in need of being taken under a charismatic leader’s wing. She has her own unsavory motives and mysterious plans that she is more than happy to execute, but she is more complex than that. She supports Ruby through her friend’s abusive relationship with the handsome and unfaithful John, and Malin feels a special kinship with the quiet and contemplative Max (who picks up aspects of Malin that she believes she is successfully hiding). Tell Me Everything is a forceful debut mystery and I would be happy to read Brockman’s next twisty tale.

The Whisperer

Margaret Agnew

The Whisperer, the latest in Karin Fossum’s Inspector Sejer series set in Norway, could just as easily be called a ghost story as a mystery. While the main character, Ragna, is not haunted by a specter, she is terrorized by the handwritten letters foretelling of her death that keep arriving in her mailbox. Much of the novel delves into Ragna’s character, her relationships (or lack thereof) to those around her, and her life story before she finds herself in Inspector Sejer’s interrogation room at the center of a sordid murder. Although she may have killed a man, her crime is hardly the focus here. Instead, that honor goes to her state of mind.

In her small, closed-off world consisting of work, going to the corner store, riding the bus, and returning home, that state of mind is every bit as claustrophobic as a Victorian mansion plagued by the spirit of a White Lady. Her parents are long dead. Her coworkers, though she is fond of them, are kept carefully at arm’s length. Even her son, whom she had as a teenager, contacts her only to send a yearly Christmas card.

Despite this, at the beginning of her confession to Inspector Sejer, it is clear she was happy with this limited existence before her carefully composed life began to fall apart piece by piece. The letters and the certainty that someone was watching her cause the dominoes to fall and her world to collapse.

Readers get pieces of who Sejer is: he had a wife, who died some time ago and whom he still mourns; he’s good at his job, and his superiors request him for important cases like Ragna’s; he lives only with his aging dog, whom he even brings with him into the interrogation room. But as he delves into Ragna’s story, the tale never stops being about her—her obsession with order and control (she counts the steps between her bus and her house), her refusal to speak above a whisper, her conviction that she has done right by her son, her greatest joy—despite their estrangement, her confession to the crime.

The questions build and build and build, until it seems there is only one possible answer to why Ragna killed her victim. But, like a true ghost story, there is never only one solution to what happened. Was there a more “fantastic” reason for the crime? Or was it a cut-and-dry case of a person so crushed by an atmosphere of fear that she did something unforgivable? In the end, it’s left to readers to cast their own judgment.

The Cold Way Home

Eileen Brady

The terrible opiate problem we have in the United States is front and center in Pulitzer Prize-winning author Julia Keller’s new mystery, The Cold Way Home, set in her native West Virginia. The eighth in the Bell Elkins series, it can easily be read as a standalone. Acker’s Gap, like many rural towns, is struggling with a generation of young people dead or strung out on drugs. Keller’s deft description of the impact addiction has on the infrastructure of a small town is startling, and forms the backdrop for the action in the book.

Bell Elkins, a former prosecutor waiting for her license to be reinstated, has teamed up with two friends— former sheriff Nick Fogelsong, back in town after a devastating divorce, and former deputy Jake Oakes, sidelined in a wheelchair from a servicerelated gunshot—to form a detective agency. Both men join Bell in a search for a missing teenage girl.

The girl is fine. Instead, Bell finds the body of Darla Gilley, the sister of Nick’s best friend. The victim is discovered on the grounds of Wellwood, a psychiatric hospital for the poor that has been long abandoned to fire and decay. West Virginia holds the dubious prize of performing the most lobotomies in the United States in the 1950s, the majority on women. This true fact skillfully plays into the murder, which is a consequence of secrets, poverty, and family pride. With very wellwritten, complex characters at its core, The Cold Way Home combines mystery and social commentary into a read you’ll long remember.

Buried in the Stacks

Eileen Brady

Midway through Allison Brook’s third book in the Haunted Library Mystery series, I daydreamed about having a ghost at work—one who conveniently knows what all your coworkers are talking about behind your back. For Carrie Singleton, the new head of programs and events scheduler for the Clover Ridge Library, it’s not fantasy.

Former employee Evelyn Havers haunts the library building, invisible to everyone except Carrie. Not content with wearing the same old duds, this spirit changes outfits frequently, favoring pencil skirts and twin sweater sets. She is, however, stuck in the library for all eternity it seems. Carrie’s peaceful world is disrupted when several homeless people begin to “camp out” in the reading room each day to get out of the cold. A fistfight breaks out and several townsfolk voice complaints about safety, adding that the unwelcome newcomers also smell. Trying to balance compassion with security, the library struggles to do what’s right for everyone. The murder of Dorothy Hawkins, an unpopular reference librarian, heightens the tension. Who would want to deliberately run her off the road?

With a little ghostly help Carrie discovers evidence that Dorothy was blackmailing people, including crooked financier Ernie Pfeiffer, the town bad guy whose politics and greed are responsible for stopping an altruistic plan to create Haven House, a sanctuary for the homeless.

All this sleuthing barely leaves Carrie time for her boyfriend or her cat, Smokey Joe. You may have to suspend your disbelief regarding Clover Ridge’s local politics, but if supernatural cozies are up your alley, Buried in the Stacks provides a diverting read.

State of Lies

Pat H. Broeske

A suspense thriller doused with domestic drama and political intrigue, State of Lies moves briskly—and cleverly—led by a protagonist who is a devoted wife, mother, and quantum physicist. Yes, a quantum physicist.

The daughter of a four-star general and Alabama beauty queen, Georgie Brennan seems to have it all. She’s married to a handsome historian for the Department of Defense. They have a six-year-old son named Sam, a lovable 150-pound mastiff named Alice, and a seemingly perfect life in their 1920s bungalow in the Washington, DC, area. Then, one rainy night, hubby Sean goes out to buy a replacement part for a broken faucet. Hours later a pair of uniformed officers show up, with bad news.

Flash forward eight months. Georgie is continuing to grieve over her husband’s untimely death in a hit-and-run car accident. Sam is also having problems. He’s been referring to his father in the present tense, insisting that he isn’t dead. In one of their many well-written mother-son exchanges, Sam tells Georgie about a game he used to play with his dad involving “the bad guys” and hiding places. You can’t take too long in choosing the latter or else “you’re dead,” he tells his startled mother.

Author Siri Mitchell is known for Christian romances and historical fiction. With this entry she gingerly steps out of her comfort zone. Language and violence aren’t explicit. In discreetly recounting a bedroom tryst with Sean, Georgie references “married sex.” It’s coy, but never feels like a cheat.

It’s in the wake of a series of odd events, some which appear threatening, that Georgie begins questioning her husband’s past—and his actions in the months just before his death. The author shrewdly has Georgie utilize her skills as a physicist (“I tried to flip the options, rotate the angles”) as she goes about her investigation. Growing increasingly paranoid, Georgie keeps her detecting confidential. She doesn’t even tell her parents, who are preoccupied with her father’s nomination to replace the departing secretary of defense.

There’s a strong moral center running throughout this efficient thriller. DC may be the capital of ruthless power struggles, but to Georgie, there’s no gray area between right and wrong. And too often we look past the truth. As Georgie puts it, “I’d always known that the answers to the big questions were staring at us…. We just couldn’t see them because they’d camouflaged themselves in our reality."

City of Windows

Hank Wagner

After suffering great physical trauma, former FBI agent Dr. Lucas Page settles into a new life devoting his time to teaching, his wife, and their ever-growing foster family. Although content, there's a part of him that misses the excitement of his old job. Thus, he's secretly elated when he's drafted back into the Bureau; he's also dismayed, given that he's been asked to investigate the death of his former partner, the victim of a sniper with seemingly preternatural talents. Page must dig deep into his own psyche and his unique skill set to catch the shooter, who is pursuing an ever expanding kill list. In his own words, to catch the killer he must not waste time with the obvious, but "Look for what isn't there. Look for the holes in the patterns."

If Pobi's latest has a template, it seems to be Robert Harris' Red Dragon (1981), as that novel came to mind repeatedly while reading this page-turner. After all, the set up is similar, with a brilliant hunter coming out of seclusion to hunt a killer whose mindset is beyond the ken of normal lawmen. It's also similar in execution, as Pobi does an excellent job of portraying a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse, where the clock is running and no one is safe.

Despite this, it only evokes, rather than imitates Harris' classic thriller. Pobi's voice—accurately described as "authentic, distinctive, and entertaining" by the great John Lescroart—is his own. His writing is electric, his plot utterly engaging, and his characters are original and vital. It's a perfectly executed thriller filled with suspense and unexpected twists and turns. Here's hoping the FBI has reason to call on Page again in the near future.

The Man Who Wouldn’t Die

Kevin Burton Smith

I think sometimes blurbs do more harm than good, particularly when they set up a reader with false hopes. Case in point? This first novel by A.B. Jewell, “the pseudonym for a Pulitzer Prize–winning technology reporter,” prominently and enthusiastically touted as doing “for Silicon Valley what Carl Hiaasen did for Florida.” Sorry. This is more MAD Magazine than Hiaasen. Good thing I like MAD Magazine.

Tech-wary and hardboiled as heck, private eye Fitch may be the last sane man in a Silicon Valley gone permanently bonkers. In this crazy ass romp, every current technological and cultural trend is stretched to the breaking point, as though an entire self-obsessed, overly PC culture has skipped its meds. The word “racist” is bandied about more than “please” or “thank you,” law firms (and they are legion) have drive-thru windows, and almost everyone Fitch meets is either already obscenely rich or on the make, be it tech hustlers desperately seeking funding, or childless young couples gaming the system for a pre-K spot (just in case).

No wonder Fitch would rather just stay home with his husband. But duty calls, when he’s hired by uber-rich Tess Donogue to find her dead father, the late but legendary “Captain Don” Donogue, a sort of Steve Jobs-type tech visionary. Despite having shuffled off this mortal coil, the Captain seems to still be active on social media, tweeping that he was murdered. Yeah, I said “tweep.” There’s also Faceburg, Gooble, MacraSoft, Shawn Hamity and a ton more. The author top loads the book with gonzo wordplay, rampant silliness, wisecracks, and even a clunky Abbott & Costello homage, and you could almost be forgiven for forgetting there’s a crime novel in here somewhere. But what? Me worry?

What She Never Said

Hank Wagner

In the second installment in her Santa Barbara Suspense Series (following 2018's What She Gave Away), author Catharine Riggs gives us two compelling protagonists with alternating, interlocking narratives. The first is the repressed, tightly wound Ruth Mosby, VP of operations at Serenity Acres, an elder care facility in the throes of great change under new ownership. The second is her coworker and neighbor, Zach Richards, a retired police detective now working as a security guard at Serenity. After noting a string of suspicious deaths among the indigent population at the home, the two find themselves investigating what might be a deadly, economically motivated conspiracy among their colleagues. The pair must determine whether those deaths are coincidental, or if they have a more sinister explanation, even as their personal lives begin to crumble due to the revelation of past indiscretions.

Riggs' latest is a well-wrought mix of mystery and melodrama, featuring two damaged souls whose greatest fear is the revelation of their intimate personal secrets. Each of the book's seven sections, cleverly labeled for one of the Seven Deadly Sins, gives a glimpse into both the mind and activities of a killer, then proceeds to focus on one of its two protagonists, first Ruth, then Zach, ultimately ending with Ruth. Doing so, Riggs slowly builds to a big finish, dropping tantalizing clues and throwing numerous roadblocks in her cast's path. It's a lively, winning formula, guaranteed to hold you spellbound.

Ellen Byron on Little Women

If you look closely at my forehead, you’ll notice a tiny scar, the result of walking into a tree while I was engrossed in a book. This is a story of that book.

When I turned ten, Shirley, an advertising coworker of my father’s, gifted me with a copy of Little Women as a combination Christmas-birthday present. (I’m a January baby). I couldn’t put the book down. I became obsessed. I reread it I don’t know how many times. My mother bought me all the Little Women Madame Alexander dolls. There’s no middle name on my birth certificate, so I began telling friends it was “Josephine Beth” or “Josephine Meg.” Even “Josephine Amy.” (Always Josephine, a harbinger of the writer I became.) If I could have changed my last name to “March,” I would have.

My love for this classic tale carried into adulthood. I developed a tradition of gifting girls with a copy of Little Women when they turned ten, just like my father’s friend had done for me. A few years ago, I decided it would be nice to let Shirley know the impact her gift had on my life. My parents lost touch with her decades ago, but an internet search yielded a phone number, so I gave her a call. Shirley was thrilled to hear from me out of the blue, and we had a lovely time catching up. Finally, I got to the purpose of the call. I told her how much her gift of Little Women had meant to me.

To which Shirley responded, “I thought you hated it.”

I was stunned. How could this lovely woman think I hated such a special gift? Then I thought back to that particular holiday season more than forty years ago. We had just moved to a new town. I was scared, lonely, and homesick —emotions ten-year-old me couldn’t articulate, especially to a business associate of my father’s. Shirley had no way of knowing why I was unhappy. All she could assume was that her gift landed like a thud. Tracking down Shirley was an impulse move on my part. I can’t even tell you what triggered it. All I know is that I’m so glad I made that call. Not only did I get to tell Shirley how much I loved her gift, I was able to share how she and Little Women inspired me to pursue a career that Josephine March would be proud of.

Ellen Byron is a USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning author, television writer, playwright, and freelance journalist. Her TV credits include Wings, Still Standing, and Just Shoot Me, and her written work has appeared in Glamour, Redbook, and Seventeen, among others. She lives in the Los Angeles area with her husband, their daughter, and the family's very spoiled rescue dog. A native New Yorker, Ellen still misses her hometown and still drives like a New York Cabbie. Fatal Cajun Festival is her fifth Cajun Country mystery.

This "Writers on Reading" essay was originally published in "At the Scene" eNews September 2019 as a first-look exclusive to our enewsletter subscribers. For more special content available first to our enewsletter subscribers, sign up here.

One Good Deed

Jay Roberts

The year is 1949 and the alliteratively named Aloysius Archer is a World War II veteran freshly paroled from prison for a crime he swears he didn't commit. Sent to the small Midwestern town of Poca City to serve out his parole, he arrives in town to check in with his parole supervisor, find a place to stay, and line up a job. Stuck for something to do before he checks in, Archer ends up at a local bar, with a drink in hand, talking to Hank Pittleman, the local banker and power broker in Poca City. The conversation leads to a lucrative job offer—all Archer has to do is collect on a debt owed to Pittleman and the money is his. But when the debtor refuses to pay up, Archer has to get creative.

Things take a decided turn for the worse when a murder occurs just down the hall from where Archer's staying. Instead of making a new start, Archer finds himself trying to avoid being sent back to prison and forced to look into the murder himself. It would be easier on Irving Shaw, the detective assigned to the case, to pin the crime on Archer, but instead both men end up as surprising allies. As more bodies turn up, the two men dovetail their investigation to seek out justice in a twist-filled case.

David Baldacci quickly establishes Archer as a man well worth rooting for. Having lived a hard life, he's wary, but not embittered by his circumstances. As for the supporting cast, I found the portrayal of Detective Shaw to be so interesting that I would love to see him as the lead in a book of his own. The women in this story, Pittleman's wife, his mistress Jackie Tuttle, and Archer's parole officer Ernestine Crabtree are an intriguing lot with not a shrinking violet among them. For those expecting one of Baldacci's more action-packed thrillers, one might be a little taken aback with the more sedate pace of the storytelling. Instead of guns blazing away, readers get an intriguing mystery paired with a character study that examines just how far someone will go to bury their past, protect their present, and improve their prospects for the future. In that respect, readers will find that One Good Deed is indeed one great book.

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If you look closely at my forehead, you’ll notice a tiny scar, the result of walking into a tree while I was engrossed in a book. This is a story of that book.

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